3 channel installation view at The Tel Aviv Museum of Art:
Organic Urbanic/Tender Prey (2008/2002) Video SD, 8:06 min, PAL, 4:3, color, sound, edition of 5+2 AP
Tender Prey: Video SD, 15:00 min, PAL, color, sound
Synchronized modular 1/3/5 channel video sound.
High angle video images of Tel Aviv’s city scrapers are the image core to this dynamic 1-5 channel piece. Inspired by satellite and outer space exploration “Organic Urbanic/Tender Prey” seeks an interface/interference between cosmological, technological and science fiction factors.
Satellite scanning of outer space, inter and outer probes of kaleidoscopic examinations, signal interceptions and urban schemes form the map and plan for the 5 channel video installation “Organic Urbanic/Tender Prey”. Aerial video adjust and joined into science fiction panoramas, short scenarios of urban cosmology, out folding and manifesting itself as a vulnerable planetarium despite its violent surges and tense atmosphere. Reminiscent of data maps as seen through guided missiles and future planet imaginings, the city in Slavin’s “Organic Urbanic/Tender Prey” is a mesh of monochrome metal, futurist machine, fantastic architecture, in-versed fields of digitalia and disquiet. A dark star. Tel Aviv transformed into a playground of the future fantastic, relocated and chaotically reconfigured to become a mechanical lost star in a fantasy of dystopian beauty.
Nili Goren, past curator of photography at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art
In Ran Slavin’s Tender Prey/Organic Urbanic, 2002-2008, Video and Sound 5 Channel, the gaze passes through complex aerial satellite video photography of Tel Aviv. These fantastic videos are conceived through kaleidoscopic examinations to produce an urban mesh of robotic ornamentations of a future city built from moving architectural patterns.
The artificial duplicity of the environment creates an absurd realm, devoid of rational of linear time and static place. The familiar city is transformed into a science fiction mutation, driven by mysterious forces. The distorted city is characterized in strange enigmatic spaces. The kaleidoscopic duplications created a surreal panorama of a threatening and dark city located between a dream and a fast changing reality. Slavin’s search for islands of tranquility and beauty within the horror has resulted in a creation of dystopian beauty.
Galit Semel, curator
5 channel installation view at netwerk, Centre for Contemporary Art, Aalst Belgium:
